1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card-type peripheral device such as a memory card.
2. Description of the Related Art
Card-type peripheral devices designed to be inserted into card slots of personal computers (PCs), called PC cards, have been available.
With the recent advent of high-speed compact PCs, ExpressCard (which was named “NEWCARD”) devices have been proposed as card-type peripheral devices having a smaller outer size and higher data transfer speed than PC cards (see, for example, “Pi-shi kado wo kogata kosoku ni: Shinkikaku ‘NEWCARD’ ga paso-kon no shinka wo atooshi (For Increased-Compactness and Increased-Speed of PC Cards: New Standard ‘NEWCARD’ Accelerates the Evolution of PCs)”, pp. 67-76, Jun. 9, 2003 issue, Nikkei Electronics).
ExpressCard is a standard intended to replace traditional PC cards (PCMCIA cards), developed by the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA), and is a card using a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Express interface. PCI Express is an input/output (I/O) bus standard intended to replace traditional PCI buses.
ExpressCard cards achieve interfaces that have significantly higher speeds than traditional cards.
Accordingly, ExpressCard cards with a non-volatile memory would provide high-speed recording and reproduction if they were used as memory cards.
Due to its ease of use, ExpressCard technology is expected to be used for a wide variety of devices such as digital cameras, mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), and music players.
An ExpressCard card has a function of a removable memory card including PCI Express and Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces as external interfaces.
In the ExpressCard specification, applications to be installed on ExpressCard cards have no requirements. An application to be installed may be implemented using either PCI Express or USB interface, or even using both interfaces.